Google + is Open, Can your business use it?

Posted on September 22, 2011 by admin

Earlier this week Google + opened the doors officially. They completed a 90 day trial period, where users could only have a Google+ account, if they were given an invite.

During the 90 day trial period, Google made about 91 improvements to the new social networking site. No doubt as the result from analytic and stats they were gathering.

A little interesting that it just opened the week that Facebook made its major updates (that everyone is hating).

Google+ for Business

The full application for Google plus has not been realized yet. I would love to go and say…”Yes, add Google+ to your site right now”, but that is simply not the case.

We need to give it some time. What will help is thinking about some of the features on Google plus. How might you adapt the features to increase sales or improve customer service?

The Features

Screensharing
A feature that allows Hangout users to view your screen.

Sketchpad
A feature that gives users the ability to doodle and draw together in Hangouts.

Google Docs
A feature you might be familiar with, but it can now be used in Hangouts to write, plan or present something with others.

Named Hangouts
A feature that allows users to join or create a public hangout about a certain topic or subject.

Search in Google+
The search engine giant brings search to its social network, which will provide relevant people, posts and content to search queries. I think this will be very powerful.

What do you think?

There are a lot of features here. It will take some time before we can even become familiar with them. So play around, get the juices flowing. I see several business interaction opportunities here.

Visit Google Plus for More Information: Google Plus

Big Google Subdomain Change

Posted on September 7, 2011 by admin

Well, at least I feel this is a huge change. It seems that in years past, many companies I have worked with have used subdomains for everything. I guess it was just the trend at the time.

This put everyone in a pickle, as SEO became vital for website performance. The reason? Google viewed subdomains as individual websites. Yes, really…they did.

The Change

Finally, Google has realized that though they now favor a nice directory structure, companies have not been able to adapt as quickly, and change all their subdomains over to directory structures (Ex. clickscrazy.com/services/ as opposed to services.clickscrazy.com)

Google has annouced they are now viewing subdomains as internal links! This is huge!

So if you have subdomains on your website those subdomains now appear within Google Webmaster Tools as links coming from within your own site and not as links coming from other sites.

The Bad

This might be good for many, but could be bad for some. Those who have a high ranking subdomain could be affected. This is pretty uncommon, but those that are using subdomains as primary sites better start making adjustments.

We don’t believe Google has modified their algorithm, which is great, because this gives us time to make changes.

As it is with Google, we won’t know the full impact until it happens. If you use subdomains think about this announcement and decide if you need to work with your webmaster to make changes.

Does Googles +1 Button Impact SEO?

Posted on August 12, 2011 by admin

It’s a good question and one that has had everyone guessing since Google’s latest creation has launched.

The answer is…it might

I have read several articles that claim that an SEO management company (Conductor) is claiming the +1 button DOES indeed impact organic results. Why do they say this? One reason is that they have Google +1 and SEO been conducting studies and found that the top five companies or brands that show up organically have about 3 times as many +1′s.

They also found that these companies or brands had about twice as many Facebook Likes. In fact, overall, they found that about 90 percent of the time, the sites ranking at the top organically had the most Google +1′s and Facebook Likes.

Of course there is no absolute proof that this is the case. But it is clear that social engagement overall does have an impact on your search engine rankings.

It may sound a little strange, but I have always thought that Google talks to itself and says “Wow, this person is really active on the web…I like that, I am going to help them rank better”.

The Question For You

Do you have Google +1 on your site? It is not going away and it is not a fade. If the above is true, you want to make sure your not left behind and forced to catch up.